This Is Home

by Lisa Duffy

  Now she walks through the house and stands in the doorway of the kitchen, and Lucy looks over at her.

  “Here she is,” Lucy says brightly to the boys, as though they’ve been waiting for Quinn. But the boys don’t even look up at her. “They’re having a picnic,” Lucy tells her. “Come sit.”

  The boys sit cross-legged on a blanket on the kitchen floor, paper plates in front of them. Watermelon and sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly. Lemonade juice boxes in their hands.

  The kitchen is light—the walls painted golden yellow. A stark change to Quinn’s kitchen downstairs, where shadows linger in corners and the dull, flat gray walls have an air of gloom.

  In the middle of the room rests a large round table, where Lucy and the girl sit across from each other, a plate of sandwiches and a bowl of fruit between them.

  Quinn crosses the room and pulls out the chair at the far end of the table.

  “Oh, not there,” Lucy says, motioning Quinn to move over a seat. “It’s under the beam. That one’s better.”

  Quinn looks up at an exposed wooden beam that runs the length of the kitchen. Two bamboo flutes with silky red tassels hang from it, and when Quinn looks back at Lucy, she sees the girl smirk out of the corner of her eye.

  “It’s not healthy to sit under a beam,” Lucy explains. “Cuts you up. The bamboo helps. I’d take away the chair, so people wouldn’t sit there, but then it’s an odd number of chairs.”

  “And then someone is left out,” Quinn replies, and Lucy’s eyes go wide.

  “Do you practice feng shui?” Lucy asks with such enthusiasm that, for a moment, Quinn considers lying to her, but she shakes her head.

  “I interned in a special education classroom when I was getting my degree. One of the mothers was very into it . . . I guess I picked up a few things.”

  Quinn doesn’t mention how the teacher made exasperated faces while recounting how the mother believed her son’s autism might be helped by positioning his bed in the right place in his room. She felt protective of the mother, even though she didn’t know her very well.

  Would it hurt to try? she remembers thinking.

  Quinn is still standing and Lucy gestures to the chair next to the girl. Quinn slides in, and the girl shifts in her seat, away from Quinn.

  Quinn doesn’t move, feeling as though she’s done something wrong—although she doesn’t know what that may be. The feeling is familiar, and a moment passes before she’s able to place it.

  And then it occurs to her. She knows this feeling from John.

  After he came home from his second deployment last year, she would slip under the covers in bed at night and turn to him, and he would move ever so slightly away from her.

  Quinn remembers it as an almost imperceptible movement—a shift in John’s weight on the mattress, the roll of his hip, the turn of his shoulder—yet this almost imperceptible movement would cause an earthquake inside of Quinn, her entire world crashing down. John’s muscled back suddenly a wall between them.

  Her heart would race, and her limbs would tremble, and she would lie silently next to him, both angry and ashamed in equal measures. Angry at him for refusing to talk to her. Ashamed that he no longer wanted her.

  Now Quinn keeps her body still. She doesn’t know why the girl doesn’t want to be near her—they’ve never really met before, she and Bent’s daughter. Libby is her name, she recalls. She can see the resemblance to Bent—through the eyes mostly, deep set with the same dark color.

  But Quinn dismisses it. She doesn’t have time to dwell on it—she needs to get the boys home for their nap.

  “Thank you so much,” Quinn says to Lucy. “For taking them. And feeding them. All of it.”

  “Oh, please. We should be thanking you. You saved me and Desiree from killing each other in the hallway,” Lucy says. “Do you feel any better?”

  Quinn nods, even though the plate of sandwiches in front of her is making her stomach turn. “Much better. I think it’s just the heat.”

  “So I’ve met the boys.” Lucy gestures to the twins. “Nick has the freckle on his cheek and Nate doesn’t. Right?” she asks, and the boys nod, their mouths full. “Thank gosh for the freckle or you could never tell them apart!”

  Quinn smiles. She hears this often. The truth is, the boys’ personalities are nothing alike. And Quinn knows their faces so well she can’t imagine not being able to tell them apart.

  “So tell me about you,” Lucy says, turning to Quinn. “I usually rent the apartment, but I’ve been swamped at work. And then my brother found you and told me to butt out. So all I know is what I could get out of these two—that you’re a nanny, and you’re pretty, and they call you Kinny.”

  “They have a hard time with the Q. It drives their mom crazy. She’s constantly correcting them. She’s worried they’ll never get it right. I think it’s cute. I hope they don’t outgrow it.” Quinn is rambling on purpose, hoping to steer the conversation back to the boys. She isn’t prepared to answer questions about her own life.

  “Where are you from?” Lucy asks pointedly.

  “Paradise,” Quinn replies.

  “How do you know my father?” the girl interrupts loudly, her voice making Quinn jump. Quinn has never heard her speak.

  “Libby,” Lucy warns, frowning.

  Quinn turns and studies the girl.

  She is thin and freckled, with hair so blond it’s almost white. Sweet is the first thing that comes to mind when you look at her. The voice that comes out of her is anything but. Low and gritty—it’s a voice that reminds Quinn of whiskey and dimly lit bars, the kind that line the waterfront in downtown Paradise.

  Before Quinn can answer, the woman Nick almost whacked with a plastic golf club walks into the kitchen wearing skintight bike shorts and a tank top. She’s tiny, barely five feet tall, and cut from stone, not an ounce of fat on her chiseled figure.

  Quinn suddenly feels enormous in her own shorts and tank top, even though she knows she’s not—flat chested and boy hipped if anything.

  “Are you coming or not?” the woman says to Libby. “I’m gonna be pissed if you make me late. I have spinning at one o’clock.”

  “Language, please,” Lucy says, tilting her head at the boys. “I apologize for my niece and sister,” she says to Quinn. “They’re not normally so rude.”

  “I’m Desiree,” the woman says to Quinn, ignoring Lucy. “The normal sister.”

  Quinn smiles, holds up her hand.

  “Go get dressed,” Desiree tells Libby, who says a quick goodbye and disappears out the back door.

  “And no flip-flops this time,” Desiree calls after her.

  She looks at Quinn and Lucy and scowls. “Only a teenager would wear flip-flops to the gym. No common sense.”

  “Libby doesn’t need to go to the gym. Don’t make her neurotic about her body like you.” Lucy frowns.

  “It’s better than her hanging around here listening to you complain about the staircase. I’ll teach my class, and then we’ll hang at the pool for a bit. She can come to work with me and get dinner. You take her home when you’re done bowling.”

  “No pizza or chicken fingers,” Lucy instructs.

  “Nice to meet you. Goodbye, small people,” Desiree says to the boys as she walks by them.

  The door shuts and they are alone, and Quinn knows she has to leave right now or there are going to be questions from Lucy—questions Quinn doesn’t know how to answer. Like who Quinn is exactly, and how she’s come to live in this house.

  Which is a problem. Because Quinn has no idea who she is anymore. And she certainly doesn’t have the words to explain how she ended up here.

  “I have to go,” Quinn blurts, gathering the boys. “Their mom insists these guys need a nap, even though I can hear them chatting away through the entire hour they’re in their room.” She forces a laugh, desperate to steer Lucy’s focus away from her.

  “I’m sorry about Libby,” Lucy says, not taking the bait. “Since Sarah . .
. passed . . . Libby’s sort of . . . protective of her father.”

  “Oh—no apologies. Please.” Quinn reaches for a plate on the blanket. “Come on boys, let’s clean up.”

  “You leave everything right there—it’ll take me two seconds.”

  Quinn thanks Lucy and tells the boys to do the same, and after they do, she takes them by the hand and hustles them toward the front door, while Lucy follows closely behind.

  “Did you know Bent’s wife?” Quinn hears Lucy call.

  Quinn doesn’t answer. She concentrates on wrangling Nate when he tries to sprint back to the kitchen. She finally gives up and hoists him up on her hip. She holds Nick’s wrist in her other hand.

  “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it,” Quinn gushes, finally in the hallway, her foot on the first step. “You were so nice to let me get cleaned up and feed them.”

  Lucy follows her out to the hallway and stands on the landing. “Sarah was from Paradise too. Is that how you and Bent met?”

  “Yes,” Quinn lies. It slips out before she can think it through. But she hasn’t prepared for this. It’s the easy answer. Easier than admitting she knows Bent only because of her husband—the husband she can no longer locate.

  As though he’s a library book she’s misplaced. A pocketbook suddenly gone missing. A set of keys she’s lost.

  Inside her head, Quinn thinks, Oh, that husband of mine? He’ll turn up. We just need to keep looking.

  The absurdity of it almost makes her laugh, right there in the hallway.

  Instead, she waves goodbye to Lucy and hurries the boys down the stairs, her face suddenly wet with what she thinks is sweat until she reaches the car, straps the boys in their car seats, and Nate reaches out with a finger, presses it to her cheek.

  “Kinny hurt?” he asks, a puzzled expression on his round-cheeked face, and when he takes his hand away, there’s a single tear on his fingertip.

  She didn’t think she had any tears left in her—she’s cried enough already to fill an ocean. And this makes her tired somehow, as though she thought she might be done with all the sadness. All the worry.

  She feels a sob growing in her chest and holds her breath until it passes, refusing to succumb to it.

  She doesn’t want to upset him, this sweet boy, or his brother. It’s silly, she knows. She’s just the nanny. But she loves them. She has since the first day she met them.

  She doesn’t trust her voice, so she doesn’t speak. Instead, she brings his hand to her lips, kisses the salty wetness from his hand, and the tear disappears between her lips.

  She watches the evidence of her grief vanish in front of her, not a trace of it left on the small pad of his finger.

  Gone just as quickly and silently and easily as her husband has vanished from her life.

   5

  Libby

  Sully’s isn’t exactly a five-star restaurant. It’s more of a bowling alley wannabe brewpub that some say is just a dive bar.

  But it has two things going for it: it’s a cop hang out, so it’s safe, and Desiree is the bartender. Which means I get free food and unlimited lemonade, and she lets me sit at the bar.

  So I tag along whenever she lets me.

  It’s busy here tonight, even though it’s Monday, because of the police charity bowling event, and Bent has already texted me a million times for the update on his team’s score, even though I keep texting back that they’re getting killed.

  Like in-last-place type of killed.

  Desiree comes over with a plate of food and puts it in front of me. I ordered the chicken fingers and fries, but that’s not what she hands me.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  It’s a game we play. I order what I really want, and she brings me what she wants me to eat. The game is so old, I don’t complain anymore.

  “Grilled chicken. Baked potato. Green beans.”

  She points to each as she says it. When she sees my face, she raises an eyebrow. “If you ate what you wanted, your diet would consist of fried food and sugar.”

  “And?” Sully says from the other end of the bar. “She’s the size of a twig. Let her eat what she wants.”

  Sully is Desiree’s ex-boyfriend, who she just broke up with, which you think would be a problem because he owns the place and is therefore Desiree’s boss.

  But they’ve broken up and gotten back together so many times over the years, I can’t tell the difference between them together and them not together.

  I’m not sure they can either.

  Sully walks over to me and hands me a bowl of butter and a salt shaker.

  “Here. I’m used to her cooking. Take my advice . . . apply liberally.”

  Desiree scowls at him and holds up two fingers.

  “A, I didn’t cook it, your chef did, and B, the two of you are freaks of nature. You eat what you want, don’t exercise, and you still look like that.” Desiree waves her hand in our direction. “So, excuse those of us who have to work at it.”

  Sully screws up his face at her. “Work at it? Please. You live for it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means this . . . is normal.” He points to himself and then to me. Then he waves his hand over Desiree’s body. “This is an obsession. Don’t pretend it’s something it’s not.”

  They’re squared off in front of me and Sully isn’t smiling, and Sully is always smiling.

  Desiree pushes past him and shoves open the door to the kitchen, her dark hair swinging with the way she’s just stomped away from us.

  Sully leans against the bar in front of me, defeated.

  “The kid thing again?” I ask.

  He studies me out of the corner of one eye, squints at the question. “You know too much for someone so small.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I tell him. “Plus, if you’re over at my house at one in the morning arguing with her in the next room, you can’t complain about not having any secrets.”

  “I came over to make up with her. She was the one that made it a fight.”

  Sully lives up the street from us in the same house he grew up in. It’s where Desiree was living until she moved upstairs.

  Bent takes every chance he gets to tell Desiree she better smarten up or Sully’s going to leave her. Desiree always rolls her eyes and tells Bent he’s just saying that because Sully’s his friend.

  But I think Bent just says out loud what everyone else is thinking. Sully’s nice—like he’ll-give-you-the-last-dime-he-has kind of nice—and Desiree?

  Well, she’s just Desiree.

  “She thinks getting pregnant will ruin her body,” Sully says to me.

  “Well, she’s kind of right. I mean . . . morning sickness. Weight gain. Probably some stretch marks. Not speaking from experience, of course.”

  I play with the straw in my lemonade, and Sully’s eyes glaze over.

  I don’t know what’s thrown him, but it could be any number of things. Lucy likes to say Sully is blessed with good humor and good looks, but good sense got away. This is as close as Lucy gets to an insult.

  If we were talking in Desiree speak, she’d just call him stupid.

  “Whatever,” Sully replies. “She’s the one that keeps bringing it up anyway. For someone who isn’t sure she wants kids, it’s all she talks about. I told her I’ll do whatever she wants but that only starts another fight about how she has to make all the decisions.” He shrugs, sighs. “But you know what? One thing I know about your aunt. Talks a big game, but she can only stay away from the Sully machine for so long.” He flexes his arm and kisses his bicep.

  “Gross,” I say, and he laughs and fills up my lemonade before he walks away to take an order.

  The bar overlooks the bowling alley, and from where I’m sitting, I can see Lucy in the far lane.

  She’s wearing the team bowling shirt like everyone else, but on her bottom half she has on a skirt. A flowery long thing that she probably bought in the consignment store in town that sells old hip
pie clothes.

  Bent’s still mad that Lucy’s even on the team.

  Over Christmas, Lucy went out to lunch with the police chief, even though Bent told her he was a womanizer.

  At first, it looked like Bent was wrong—the chief let Lucy feng shui his office and came over to Lucy’s for dinner twice one week, and when they needed to fill a spot on the bowling team after the chief broke his ankle, Lucy filled in for him.

  She turned out to be a pretty good bowler—better than the chief, all the guys said—but a month later, the chief got caught sexting a couple of women on his staff, one who was married with kids, whose husband found out about it and went to the local paper.

  After the story broke, the chief never came over for dinner again. Lucy kept the spot on the team but Bent was still sideways about the whole thing.

  “I told you you were going to get hurt,” Bent kept saying until Lucy had enough of him.

  “Who said I’m hurt?” she asked. “We had a wonderful time together. He’s a lovely man when you get to know him.”

  “No, he’s not,” Bent said. “He’s actually a total asshole. Why do you always do that?”

  “Do what?” Lucy asked innocently.

  “Think everyone is so wonderful. Most women would be completely pissed off. I mean, he sent a picture of his—” Bent saw me out of the corner of his eye and cleared his throat.

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Well, first off—that’s not my behavior to defend. The chief can take that burden. Furthermore, I was introduced to the bowling team, and turns out, the chief never liked to bowl. It’s all entwined in the cosmic trinity, Bentley—there is a choice at every crossroad. A part of everyone’s destiny is man luck. A negative can always transform into something beneficial. You should really learn more about it. Both you and Desiree actually. The two of you might attract more positive energy into your lives.”

  “So, you’re staying on the team?” Bent asked, raising his voice.

  “Of course,” Lucy told him, as though this was never in question.

  Now Desiree comes over to me and takes my plate and puts it in the sink. She drops the fork and leans over to get it. Her jeans are so tight I don’t know how she can bend in them, and she’s paired them with knee-high black stiletto boots and a shirt that barely passes for a tank top. More of a tube top, in my opinion.